There are others who would like to see Perl attract a wider audience that included non-programmers, developers who think build is a GUI button, and people who just want drop-in functionality on their website or desktop. If this is a goal, making make a prerequiste to downloading CPAN modules is an impediment. You don't need make to write Perl programs. You don't need make to use Perl programs. You don't even need make to copy scripts from one place to another nor to run tests, so why require it? It is like insisting that everyone who wants to eat cheese go out and buy a diamond cutter. It doesn't make the cheese taste better and it gets in the way of eating cheese.

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I STILL find it hard to install modules (at leas on Mac OSX Snow Leopard). While I'm definitely new-ish to Perl, I don't consider myself a 'point and click' GUI end user and yet installing modules remains a skill I painfully lack. Quite honestly I don't see how installing modules through the command line makes me a better Perl programmer. (but maybe I just don't know enough about Perl to even answer that)

I would love to see at least an option given to CPAN devs to create an 'easier' install process. The CPAN is always touted as one of Perl's greatest strengths and yet it has this hurdle that newbies (and even not so newbies) need to surmount in order to benefit. I just don't see how that's a good thing.

P.S. Sorry for the rant. It's not something I usually do but this hit home for me a little. Congratulations on the tutorial. Great work!!

"...the adversities born of well-placed thoughts should be considered mercies rather than misfortunes." — Don Quixote

I would love to see at least an option given to CPAN devs to create an 'easier' install process.

Easier how?

CPAN appears to be a source code repository...

on the other hand you have PPM repositories (esp ActiveStates) with GUI frontend, and then you have Debian apt-get... but wait, apt-get is commandline ... but wait, CPANPLUS::Shell::Tk, CPANPLUS::Shell::Wx

but wait, that is still about same level of hardness; how can it get easier?